Article Writers: How to Sell Rejected Material

Rejected materials should be considered as an integral part of your databank.  Believe it or not, the rejected articles that most of us put back in our files can often be pulled out and sold.  Here is the procedure I have used successfully for many years to sell rejected articles.

Re-check your writing to make sure it is professional.  Look at the beginnings, and endings, the organization, the theme or subject, the mechanics of the article, the anecdotes, the statistics, and the quotes and finally the conformity of the article to the magazine’s style.

Watch for new developments.  Let's say you wrote an article on false child molestation cases being filed against husbands by wives going through a divorce.  For example, in one case, the police, broke into the husband’s apartment in the middle of night, handcuffed him and took him off to jail, where he spent several months behind bars.  After a long, drawn out process, the husband finally cleared himself in court.

You start sending the revised article out but it gets turned down by a number of magazines, because "the public's perception is that these cases are so horrible that anyone accused must be guilty."  This was the response to an article written by one of my students. No one wanted it and after several months he withdrew it from circulation and put it back in his files. 

Since then, a number of cases of deliberate false accusations have shown up in the magazines.  Several stories about it have appeared on radio and TV.  Currently my student is thinking of sending it back out.  The climate has changed again, now maybe the editors will feel it is a believable story.

Look for an upswing in public interest.  Any time the public becomes interested in a subject, articles on that subject become viable.

Perhaps you did an article, “grandmothers marching for peace“. You sold it and filed it.  Now you notice that the grandmothers are out there marching again.  It's time to pull that article and send out again.  I don't know how many times I've sold articles on the same subject years later, because the public interest came back again.

Be alert for changes among the leaders in a field or industry.  Any time the emphasis changes in an industry it opens up a market for articles.  For instance, the solar energy field is red hot right now.  If you can find new developments in solar energy, that undoubtedly is a salable article.  Just keep your eyes open.

Six Ways to Keep Your Files Active.  Stay alert for new ways to sell your material

• Pull an article out of your files once a week and list all its possible markets.  Writers often forget that their files contain salable material.  By making a conscious effort to do this weekly, you will force yourself to focus on the possibilities.

• Schedule every published article to go out again within four years.  Make a list of all possible markets and keep adding to it as you go along.  If you like, you can submit all of these simultaneously. Be sure you submit to the publication that bought the piece in the first place.

• Pick one magazine.  If you think you can sell at least one of your articles to that magazine, ask yourself if that article would fit their needs.  Query any that do.

• Circulate a multiple query.  I have had good luck sending several queries at once.  This works especially well if you're been selling to several magazines for some time.  A multiple query can consist of four to five queries per page.  One paragraph per query.  If I have pictures, I often add one small picture per query.  This can be done as an e-query.

• Schedule a complete file review once a year.  Take a week or so and do nothing but go through your files.  If you have a list of magazines that maybe a particular article from your file might fit then query that magazine. 

• Occasionally have another writer look through your files.  Ask that person to suggest other places to sell your material.  Sometimes he or she will see possibilities that you missed.

• Pick an article you think is good then tell yourself you're not going to stop until you've made 50 to 100 sales of that article.  During the next year keep trying to push sales.  Every time you pick up a magazine ask yourself, "is this a market for my train article?” Or any other subject.  By focusing on the article in your files like this, it is possible to increase your overall sales several times.

It is important to use your databank as effectively as possible.  I know this works because for one entire year it supported my family by working my files, creating new articles out of material there, by sending out articles I that had been rejected elsewhere, by reselling sold articles to non-competing markets, or by using a research from previous articles.  This allowed me to increase my article sales several times.